shall see him
again."

A faint color mantled in her cheeks, and her eyes began to sparkle.

"Beauty's a great power, I've heard," she said to herself, still looking
at that fair image in the glass. "There's no knowing what I mayn't do if
I meet the right person. And one meets nobody in Angleford. In
London--things may be different."

Different, indeed, but not as poor Milly fancied the difference.

And then she brushed back her curls, and fastened up her black dress,
and tied a clean muslin apron round her trim little figure before going
downstairs; and when she brought in the tea-tray that afternoon, Lettice
looked at her with pleasure and admiration, and thought how sweet and
good a girl she was, and how she had won the Prayer-Book prize at the
Diocesan Inspector's examination, and of the praise that the rector had
given her for her well-written papers at the Confirmation Class, and of
her own kindly and earnest teaching of all things that were good in
Lettice's eyes; and she decided that Mrs. Harrington and Mrs. Budworth
were mere croakers, and that poor Milly would never come to harm.

BOOK II.

CHANGE.

"Yet the twin habit of that early time
Lingered for long about the heart and tongue;
We had been natives of one happy clime,
And its dear accent to our utterance clung.

"Till the dire years whose awful name is Change
Had grasped our souls, still yearning in divorce,
And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range--
Two elements which sever their life's course."

George Eliot.

CHAPTER VI.

NEW BEGINNINGS.

"Poor dear Lettice! how she must have suffered!" said Clara Graham.

"Less than you suppose," rejoined her husband.

"Jim, what do you mean? You are very hard-hearted."

"No, I'm not! I'm only practical. Your friend, Miss Campion, has been a
source of lamentation and woe to you ever since I made your
acquaintance. According to you, she was always being sacrificed to that
intolerable prig of a brother of hers. _Then_ she was immolated on the
altar of her father's money difficulties and her mother's ill-health.
Now she has got a fair field, and can live where she likes and exercise
her talents as she pleases; and as I can be as unfeeling as I like in
the bosom of my family, I will at once acknowledge that I am very glad
the old man's gone."

"I do hope and trust, Jim----"

"That I am not a born fool, my dear?"

"--That you won't s